The Gerritsen Beach Property Owner’s Association closed its normally public monthly meeting to the press and non-members last week, making good on a promise it made in the wake of a local blogger’s unflattering coverage of the neighborhood.

At last month’s meeting, outraged parents demanded the meetings be closed after local […]

Our neighborhood downtown Brooklyn based community paper recently picked up on the possibility of a traffic signal on Gerritsen Avenue. Maybe they picked up the story out of thin air because they weren’t at the meeting.

The Village Voice gave a great write up about “18 obsessive, cantankerous, and unstoppable Gotham blogs worth going ape over”. We at GerritsenBeach.net are humbled by the headline and honored to be included with other great blogs.

Daniel Cavanagh is Gerritsen Beachâ€“born-and-bred, and he knows his deep-Brooklyn neighborhood is a mystery to most of us. Before he started blogging about it at GerritsenBeach.net in 2006, he says, “You’d only know it from its hate crimes, like maybe someone got killed somewhere else, and they’d say they’re from Gerritsen Beach.” He wanted to put out a more well-rounded picture, and show that Gerritsen Beachâ€”and the surrounding south Brooklyn area, in generalâ€”is “a nice place with stupid problems, like any other part of the city.”

This he does: If there’s a Lundy’s being refurbished in Sheepshead Bay, or a big tree falls on Noel Avenue, he’s on it. Cavanagh also goes to precinct and community board meetings, and reports on and sometimes posts videos of them, which is a big deal around his way. “Community board meetings suck,” he says. “They’re three or four hours long. People come up to me and say, ‘I can’t go to these meetingsâ€”viewing your website and getting the breakdown is easier for me.’ ”

Cavanagh breaks stories: His 2008 coverage of black kids getting hassled on Manhattan Beach during a senior “cut day” at local high schools was followed days later by a story in the Post. He got no credit, though. “It’s their policy,” he shrugs. “I don’t complain a lot. I’m more interested in getting stories that the other papers don’t get.” And sometimes, Cavanagh is the story, as when Nobody Beats the Wiz founder Stephen Jemal came after him for publicizing problems with Jemal’s land development businessâ€”and an associate of Jemal’s hacked Cavanagh’s site. The Daily News picked that one up and interviewed Cavanagh.

In Sundays daily news there was an editorial calling out Councilman Re-Elect Lew Fidler demanding he return $88,500 received.

Councilman Fidler as the editorial describes, received this money after using 41 pages of: GerritsenBeach.net, Sheepsheadbites.com and Bay News articles about the election. Councilman Fidler won the election He won by 60 percent, 17,101 votes […]

Cops are hunting for a pair of prowlers who have committed at least 11 burglaries at schools in Queens and Brooklyn. Police say the spree began in December when the duo broke into Our Lady of Grace school on 101st Street near 158th Avenue in Ozone Park, Queens.

Its always very nice to see GerritsenBeach.net mentioned in any media but I guess its always better to be in the NYTimes than lets say courier life. We even got top billing over otherÂ blogs such as Gowanus Lounge and Roosevelt Island […]